AD ASTRA PER ASPERA

Last night, I made a variation of Habeas Brulee‘s Tea Cookies. Instead of the oolong she used, I went with jasmine green tea. I also used orange flower-scented sugar to coat the cookies, because I love flowers in food. My miniature citrus plants are blooming for the very first time (they’re about four years old now!) and the smell is lovely. The resulting cookies were well-balanced, not too sweet, and fragrant without any cloying overtones. I’d love to make these with my Margo-inspired Madge Shelton tea (black tea spiked with rose, spearmint and pink peppercorn).

I’ll be taking a baker’s dozen to the Ink Spot this evening. We’ll be working on the rose and the poppy this time, which will round out the largest components of the design. The rose is a Handel, one of my mother’s favorite flowers. She grew one next to our front door, untrellised, and the carnivorous beast used to demand blood toll from nearly every visitor. I can’t tell you how many times that damned rose stabbed me in the left arm growing up, so this seems like fitting tribute. I planted poppies in our garden when we were still considering a backyard wedding, hoping for a sea of orange and red. They were a prominent motif on our wedblog (along with ginkgo), and I used them in my bouquet for our cheesy awesome Vegas wedding.